Developers of the old Broadway Plaza Hotel at 11th Avenue and Broadway created new office suites and renamed it the Metlo.

DENVER, CO - MAY 1: The old Broadway Plaza Hotel at 11th Ave and Broadway in Denver has been redeveloped into swank office suites on Thursday May 1, 2014. (Denver Post Photo by Cyrus McCrimmon)

At left, the mid-century-modern-style Broadway Plaza Hotel at 11th Avenue and Broadway was built in 1957. Below left, the building is now a set of simple, chic office spaces that are drawing a mix of creative professionals into Denver's Golden Triangle district.

You can’t have an honest discussion about the newly renovated Broadway Plaza Motel — or understand how welcome the building’s rebirth is to its neighborhood — without getting just a little gross.

Luckily, we can get that out of the way quickly via this snippet of a review posted to an online travel site shortly before the place closed last year:

“I could have overlooked the dust-covered room, old furniture, cigarette-burned trays, and mildew-covered shower curtain,” the frustrated guest reported.

“But, when my partner woke up at 5:30 covered, literally covered, in bug bites, that was it.”

OK, get that image out of your head. Take a second.

Now, picture one of the city’s most-visible examples of midcentury-modern architecture transformed into a set of simple, chic office spaces that are drawing a mix of creative professionals into Denver’s Golden Triangle district.

The bed bugs have checked out. Web designers, architects, hair stylists, tattoo artists and organic-juice squeezers are the new guests.

The motel is now The Metlo, a simple rearrangement of letters that honor its past while placing it right on trend with the micro-business revolution redefining entrepreneurship in metropolitan areas. The Metlo has 22 offices suites on the market, small at 250 square feet, and relatively affordable for a small start-up company at $1,000 a month.

Plus, it looks slick. Developer Jon C. Cook and his team did what they could to preserve the sleek lines of the 1957 original, a classic of roadside design with streamlined details, a flat roof and exterior walkways and staircases.

“We didn’t change anything in this structure,” said Cook. “Everything was already here hidden under the crud.”

They did update the building, ripping out the courtyard walls and replacing them with floor-to-ceiling windows. They removed the carpeting — sometimes layers of it — and finished off the exposed-concrete floors. They replaced the wooden panels along the railing with steel cable and painted the remainder a smoky gray and lime green.

Still to come is a new elevator and a relighting of the hotel’s neon sign, an icon at the corner of 11th Avenue and Broadway.

Cook, who has developed several older properties along Broadway (he owns buildings that house Winchell’s Donut House, Meineke mufflers, Bushwhackers Saloon and other businesses farther south along the strip) picked up the motel for back taxes five years ago. He leased the building back to the hotel manager who kept it open until eight months ago when the economy was ripe for redevelopment.

Not all of Cook’s buildings have the architectural distinction of the motel, so it became a pet project. “From Day One, we could see the potential in this,” he said.

Cook’s “we” refers to a team of family members who are acting as business partners. One of them happens to be his son-in-law Mark Rycroft, the former Colorado Avalanche hockey player and current on-air announcer with the Altitude television network.

Rycroft is the face of the project, staffing the office as his day job and working with tenants. He studied real estate development at the University of Denver, so he’s right at home in the business. “I wanted to have a phase two in my life and this is perfect,” he said.

While the Metlo’s tenants vary, Cook and Rycroft are trying to keep it specialized. They recently turned down a bill-collection agency as a tenant, hoping to curate a rental roster that will gain their building buzz as a creative hub. Leases are going well, so maintaining the policy seems possible.

Not surprisingly, that would please the neighbors who saw the motel as a drag on the Golden Triangle where property values have soared in recent years as new museums and condo projects have come along.

Cheap, frequently vacant and smack in the middle of a nightclub zone, the place could draw a sketchy partying crowd.

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